The Miami Heat announced that guard Dru Smith (hip) will be available for Saturday night’s game against the Orlando Magic after he was listed as probable going into the game.<\/p>\n
Jaime Jaquez Jr. (hip) is available after being put on the injury report late.<\/p>\n
On the Magic side of things, forward Jett Howard was ruled a late scratch and will not play as he deals with an illness. Howard was not originally on the injury report.<\/p>\n
Here’s the rest of the rotation analysis, injury report and game preview:<\/p>\n
ANALYSIS<\/p>\n
With Herro and Powell back in the fold, there will be some questions as to which of them starts or comes off the bench, both in this game and going forward and how their backcourt rotation plays out from there.<\/p>\n
Although the possibility exists that both play in the starting unit together, the last time the two were healthy, coach Erik Spoelstra had been bringing Herro off the bench with Powell starting alongside Davion Mitchell and Pelle Larsson.<\/p>\n
Often times, the result of this was the Heat alternating bewteeen one of their scoring guards (Powell, Herro) and defensive-orieneted guards like Mitchell and either Smith or rookie guard Kasparas Jakucionis.<\/p>\n
Last time the backcourt was healthy, Smith was the one out of the rotation for Jakucionis, but Smith has continued to carve out a role for himself with his defensive prowess, so it will be interesting to see if one of Jakucionis or Smith’s minutes get cut for the other or if Spoelstra manages to play a rotation where all their backcourt players find time.<\/p>\n
For the Magic, with Howard a late scratch, it wouldn’t be surprising if Magic head coach Jamahl Mosley gave Noah Penda some minutes and leaned into the other Magic frontcourt players already in the rotation. Talented rookie guard Jase Richardson could be in line to get some playing time as well.<\/p>\n
INJURY REPORTHEAT<\/p>\n
Jaime Jaquez Jr.: Available – Hip<\/p>\n
Tyler Herro: Available – Quadriceps<\/p>\n
Norman Powell: Available – Groin<\/p>\n
Dru Smith: Available – Hip<\/p>\n
Andrew Wiggins: Out – Knee<\/p>\n
Nikola Jovic: Out – Back<\/p>\n
Keshad Johnson: Available – G League Assignment<\/p>\n
Trevor Keels: Available – G League (Two-Way)<\/p>\n
Jahmir Young: Out – G League (Two-Way)<\/p>\n
Vlad Goldin: Available – G League (Two-Way)<\/p>\n
Terry Rozier: Out – Not with team<\/p>\n
MAGIC<\/p>\n
Jett Howard: Out – Illness<\/p>\n
Franz Wagner: Out – Ankle<\/p>\n
Anthony Black: Out – Abdominal Strain<\/p>\n
Jonathan Isaac: Out – Knee<\/p>\n
Jamal Cain: Out – G League (Two-Way)<\/p>\n
Colin Castleton: Out – G League (Two-Way)<\/p>\n
Alex Morales: Out – G League (Two-Way)<\/p>\n
Game date, time and location:\u00a0Saturday, Mar. 14, 8:00 p.m. EST, Kaseya Center, Miami, Florida<\/p>\n
TV:\u00a0FanDuel Sports Network Sun, FanDuel Sports Network Florida (Orlando)<\/p>\n
Radio:\u00a0104.3 FM (Miami\/Ft. Lauderdale), ESPN 106.3 FM, (West Palm Beach), FOX Sports Radio 105.9 FM (Ft. Myers\/Naples), 1450 AM (Suart), 97.7 FM (Florida Keys), WAQI 710 AM (Spanish-language broadcast, South Florida), 104.5 FM The Beat (Orlando)<\/p>\n
VITALS: The\u00a0Miami Heat<\/a>\u00a0(38-29) and\u00a0Orlando Magic<\/a>\u00a0(37-28) meet for the fifth and final regular season matchup. So far this season Orlando have won all four contests which also includes an NBA Cup quarterfinals game on December 9. Last season, the teams split the series, 2-2. The Heat are 81-65 all-time versus the Magic during the regular season, including 45-26 in home games and 36-39 in road games.<\/p>\n PROJECTED STARTERSHEAT<\/p>\n G Davion Mitchell<\/p>\n G Tyler Herro<\/p>\n C Bam Adebayo<\/p>\n F Pelle Larsson<\/p>\n F Andrew Wiggins<\/p>\n MAGIC<\/p>\n G Jalen Suggs<\/p>\n G Desmond Bane<\/p>\n C Wendell Carter Jr.<\/p>\n F Tristan da Silva<\/p>\n F Paolo Banchero<\/p>\n Spread: Heat -4.5 (-110), Magic +4.5 (-110)<\/p>\n Moneyline: Heat -180, Magic +154<\/p>\n Total points scored: 237.5 (over -106, under -114)<\/p>\n Game odds refresh periodically and are subject to change. If you or someone you know has a gambling problem and wants help, call\u00a0.<\/p>\n QUOTABLE<\/p>\n Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra their win over the Milwaukee Bucks:\u00a0“I thought this was one of our more impressive wins of the season. Going into it, you want to make sure you have your emotional mental battery recharged but it’s quite natural for there to be a little bit of something where you don’t have quite the juice and what we talked about in our meeting and walkthroughs, we needed to have a couple people step up.”<\/p>\n “Maybe some x-factors bring something different. Bam, what he did the other night, was so inspiring, it raised the level of everybody on our team and sometimes you need to inspire the inspirer. Motivate the motivator, and that’s what Pelle [Larsson] and [Kasparas Jakucionis] did tonight.”<\/p>\n For more Miami Heat information and conversation, check out\u00a0Off The Floor.<\/a>Alexander Toledo is a contributor to Miami Heat On SI and producer\/co-host of the\u00a0Five on the Floor podcast<\/a>, covering the Heat and NBA. He can be reached at\u00a0Twitter: @tropicalblanket<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Miami Heat announced that guard Dru Smith (hip) will be available for Saturday night’s game against the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":192025,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124],"class_list":["post-192024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}